Rewriting The Rules

Eric Rhodes is no newcomer to being infatuated with clean custom rides. You see, he's been going to shows with his dad since he was a little kid. When he was old enough, his brothers told him that he should get into custom trucks. Once he'd built up the courage to actually build one himself, there was no stopping him.

Since Eric runs a Relaxed Atmosphere logo, the club would have nothing less than the finest specimens. It was with this sort of mentality that Eric starting building the '92 standard-cab first-generation S-10 you see before you now. The truck was nothing special when he bought it from his wife's cousin for a mere $1,300. But then he started toying with the possibilities of making the truck a true head-turner.

There were plenty of problems that had to be sorted out before the truck could even hit the road safely. When he took possession of the S-10, Eric became the semi-proud owner of a truck with a badly damaged frame. Rather than spend all kinds of time and money putting the truck on a frame machine, Eric opted to pull the cab and bed off. He scrapped the factory chassis from the engine firewall rearward in favor of a custom tube chassis built by the pros at Kustomwerks. As the chassis was built, the idea that the truck would have to sit extremely low was kept in mind. Once the cab was placed atop the half-new chassis, the stock-floor body drop made a huge difference in the way things looked.

One step at a time, Eric hammered at various aspects until the truck was a representation of what he'd wanted while shelling out that original $1,300. Each step of the way, Eric found that he liked the S-10 just a little more than he had before and couldn't wait to drive it and enjoy the fruits of his labors. Before actually finishing the project, though, Eric rushed into painting the truck. Although this finished the basics to a point where the truck looked good, Eric found that it should have been the dead-last thing done. By the time all the truck's custom touches had been attended to, Eric realized that he could have saved a lot of time and money if he'd just thought out his plan of attack a little more thoroughly first.

With the S-10 complete for now, Eric has been very active. The Sea Foam Green standard cab has 220,000 miles on the odometer, and you can rest assured that this clean ride is no trailer queen. It sees every mile to and from shows in the Southeast, and it gets there and back without so much as a whimper from under the hood or the ultra-custom suspension. Eric, on the other hand, may do more complaining about the lack of room in the early single cab after the long hauls to many of the shows he takes names at.